Executive Summary
Plan Goal
Like similar transit systems in Japan and Western Europe, BART can retool its stations and approach to access planning to attract more bicycles and fewer cars to the system each day. Bicycling to BART, particularly when those trips replace automobile access, helps avoid construction of costly auto parking spaces, can increase ridership, reinforce the agency’s image as a green transportation provider, promote fitness and public health, and contribute to achieving regional goals to reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. Providing plentiful and convenient bike parking is also the most effective tool BART has to encourage as many passengers as possible to leave their bicycles at the station, rather than bringing them onboard, thus leaving space for the system to carry more passengers.
When this plan was published in 2012, approximately 4% of home-based trips, or about 14,000, were made to and from BART stations each weekday by…

Introduction
It is recognized that hard factors such as travel time, cost, availability of public transport services, and car ownership have a major impact when people consider the choice between using an automobile or public transport. Nevertheless, there is evidence from the literature that rail-based public transport often is considered superior to bus systems, even in cases where quantitative hard factors are equal. This attraction of passengers is known as a psychological rail factor, and it is used to express a higher attraction in terms of higher ridership of rail-based public transport in contrast to bus services (Axhausen et al. 2001; Megel 2001b; Ben-Akiva and Morikawa 2002; Vuchic 2005; Scherer 2010a). The existence of this rail factor is widely accepted among experts, but little evidence exists about the reasons for this phenomena.
The idea of a rail factor is consistent with statements that the image of a transport system has an impact on demand. Furthermore, research…

Foreward
TCRP Report 153: Guidelines for Providing Access to Public Transportation Stations provides a process and spreadsheet-based tool for effectively planning for access to high capacity transit stations, including commuter rail, heavy rail, light rail, bus rapid transit (BRT), and ferry. The report is accompanied by a CD that includes the station access planning spreadsheet tool that allows trade-off analyses among the various access modes (automobile, transit, bicycle, pedes­trian, and transit-oriented development) for different station types. The potential effectiveness of transit-oriented development opportunities to increase transit ridership is also assessed.
This report and accompanying materials are intended to aid the many groups involved in planning, developing, and improving access to high capacity transit stations, including public transportation and highway agencies, planners, developers, and…

During the last 30 years, due to the flexibility of light rail transit (LRT), new systems have been implemented, some of which include line segments that share tracks with freight operations regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). To operate on the general railroad system, these LRT systems have obtained waivers from FRA safety regulations by operating with temporal separation. The aim of this research study was to further develop concepts for temporal separation to enable shared use operations in additional locations with more frequent and more flexible operations of FRA-compliant and non-compliant services. Based on the operating concepts and technology that facilitate temporal separation on the NJ TRANSIT River LINE, this project prepared a design for expanding freight and passenger operations while maintaining separation of modes in a configuration that is very similar to designs that have already been accepted by FRA.

Abstract
The transportation sector is a major source of air pollution worldwide, yet little is known about the effects of transportation infrastructure on air quality. In this paper we measure the effects of one major type of transportation infrastructure – urban rail transit – on air quality. Our approach uses the sharp discontinuity in transit utilization on the opening day of a completely new rail transit system in Taipei, Taiwan, to identify the air quality effects of rail transit infrastructure. Using hourly air quality data from Taiwan we have three central findings. First, we find that the opening of the Metro reduced air pollution from one key tailpipe pollutant, carbon monoxide, by 5 to 15 percent. Second, we find little evidence that the opening of the Metro affected ground level ozone pollution. Third, we find little evidence suggesting that automobile travelers adjusted their time or route of travel to the availability of rail transit. These findings shed new light on…

This document presents a set of Transit-Oriented Development Guidelines which have been adopted by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. Transit-oriented development, or “TOD”, means development that is vibrant, pedestrian-friendly, and genuinely integrated with transit.

Abstract
Over the past two decades, Germany has improved the quality of its public transport services and attracted more passengers while increasing productivity, reducing costs, and cutting subsidies. Public transport systems reduced their costs through organizational restructuring and outsourcing to newly founded subsidiaries; cutting employee benefits and freezing salaries; increasing work hours, using part-time employees, expanding job tasks, and encouraging retirement of older employees; cooperation with other agencies to share employees, vehicles, and facilities; cutting underutilized routes and services; and buying new vehicles with lower maintenance costs and greater passenger capacity per driver. Revenues were increased through fare hikes for single tickets while maintaining deep discounts for monthly, semester, and annual tickets; and raising passenger volumes by improved quality of service, and full regional coordination of timetables, fares, and services. Those efforts by…

Executive Summary
Purpose of Research
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Transportation Policy Project is one of many groups calling for new competitive programs with broad investment goals and eligibility, plus incentives for states and metropolitan areas to implement programs that support the nation’s transportation objectives. The New Starts program, administered by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), is essentially the only discretionary transportation program of any size that o.ers a history of program design and implementation extending over many years. This paper analyzes the FTA’s discretionary New Starts program to identify the lessons learned and compo­nents that might be relevant to these new competitive programs, particularly with respect to federal funding decisions.
Findings
The New Starts program has broad investment objectives but relatively narrow eligibility. It funds .xed guideway transit projects, such as urban rail and bus rapid transit,…

Smart growth policy strategies attempt to control increasing auto travel, congestion, and vehicle emissions by redirecting new development into communities with a high-intensity mix of shopping, jobs, and housing that is served by high-quality modal alternatives to single occupant vehicles. The integration of innovative technologies with traditional modal options in transit-oriented developments (TODs) may be the key to providing the kind of high-quality transit service that can effectively compete with the automobile in suburban transit corridors. A major challenge, however, of such an integration strategy is the facilitation of a well-designed and seamless multi-modal connection infrastructure – both informational and physical. EasyConnect II explored the introduction and integration of multi-modal transportation services, both traditional and innovative technologies, at the Pleasant Hill Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District station during the initial construction phase of the…